


Shopping and Lists

by drugstore_unicorn



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-14
Updated: 2017-05-14
Packaged: 2018-10-31 12:24:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10899309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drugstore_unicorn/pseuds/drugstore_unicorn
Summary: The first and last time Sherlock Holmes goes grocery shopping. One-shot.





	Shopping and Lists

**Author's Note:**

> This work is set before Series 1 and was actually written before Series 3, so one reference is a bit wonky.

“Sherlock, the whole place smells of feet!”

“They’re not my feet,” Sherlock replied, sounding smug.

“I know; they’re Mr. Haliwell’s, and they’ve been in the oven since Tuesday!” John was starting to cross the threshold of exasperation and move straight to anger.  
Mrs. Hudson stopped polishing the table in the entryway and listened. Her boys hadn’t had a case for nearly a fortnight; it was only a matter of time before Sherlock’s boredom reached a dangerous level and they both started to snipe at each other.

“It’s an exp—“ Sherlock started to say.

“No, four days ago it was an experiment. Now it’s just another mess you won’t clean up!” John shouted.

Right then. Although she would still adamantly remind Sherlock and John that she was not their housekeeper, she wasn’t opposed to giving the “B” flat a good tidy when necessary. John was usually conscientious about his own room and belongings, but between his shifts at the clinic and working with Sherlock, things got ahead of him every now and then. As for Sherlock, well, looking after himself had never been much of a priority.

Quietly, Mrs. Hudson ascended the staircase. Most days, she would just wait until they had both gone out or were in their respective bedrooms in order to do a bit of dusting, mopping and removing some of the more dangerous-looking items for fear of Sherlock accidentally poisoning himself or blowing up the house. It was a bit tricky with them both there in the sitting room, but Mrs. Hudson had learned a while ago that if they were in the middle of an argument, she could tap dance in between them and they wouldn’t pay her any mind.

“You know, I can’t even bring Susan back tonight!” John was agitatedly straightening a pile of papers as Mrs. Hudson slipped through their open doorway. Sherlock, on the other hand, looked almost Zen-like as he perched in the desk chair and reviewed something on his computer.

“Good. She’s insufferable,” Sherlock commented, his eyes still glued to his laptop screen.

“She is not, and don’t even pretend that you remember who she is!” John shot back.

“Well, if you don’t think I bother to know who she is, why on earth would you think I would tidy up for her?” Sherlock asked, his tone placid.

“None of this is really about her!” John snapped. Sherlock gave him a look of utter confusion, wondering why his flatmate was so upset, then. “It’s about pitching in around here, Sherlock. All right, so you’re not much for cleaning. I don’t suppose it would kill you to do some of the shopping now and then?”

At this Mrs. Hudson let out a giggle. Much to her surprise, Sherlock’s and John’s heads snapped in her direction.

“Sorry, dears,” she apologized. “I guess Sherlock never told you about the shops,” she said to John.  
There were practically daggers coming out of Sherlock’s eyes.

“Tell me what? Sherlock?” John asked, perplexed.

Throwing the detective a half-apologetic glance, Mrs. Hudson explained, “Well, it’s not so much that he ‘won’t’; he can’t.”

*************************************************************************************************************  
Thirteen months prior:

“Is he settling in?” Mycroft asked as he accepted a cup of tea from Mrs. Hudson.

“Yes, I think well enough,”Mrs. Hudson replied. “Miss him, do you?” she asked, her voice light. 

Mycroft rolled his eyes. “Our family home barely survived his childhood. A return tour during his adulthood was almost its undoing. Moving him upstairs here was more of a relief to us than him.”

Mrs. Hudson took her own teacup and settled in the chair opposite Mycroft. She didn’t believe a word of it. Neither Holmes boy was the easiest person to get close to, or even like sometimes, but once you came to know them, they managed to endear themselves – even to each other – in their own peculiar ways. She even kept running lists of Mycroft’s and Sherlock’s better qualities (she did need reminders at times).

As if on cue, although he was technically late to this invited tea, Sherlock came through the back door.

“Afternoon,” he greeted his brother and friend-turned-landlady. “Mrs. Hudson, that last step on the fire escape has a bit of a wobble.”

“It’s not really meant for everyday use, you know, dear,” Mrs. Hudson replied, know that would fall on deaf ears.

Sherlock started to forage through her cupboards before joining them in the sitting room with a custard tart in hand.

“’May I have a tart, Mrs. Hudson?’” Mycroft said, admonishing his brother his usual appalling lack of manners.

“Oh, I don’t mind,” Mrs. Hudson said quickly. She truly didn’t. She liked that Sherlock felt comfortable enough here to know where things are and how to get them without asking. She liked that he was feeling well enough to eat. Seeing him through addiction, rehab and a relapse tore through her heart in ways she never imagined possible. It made her appreciate the little triumphs of normalcy.

Sherlock, meanwhile, smirked at his older brother as he collapsed on the sofa and took a hearty bite of the custard tart.

“Have you eaten anything else today?” Mycroft asked, and Mrs. Hudson could hear the undercurrent of worry in his tone.

“I’ve been busy, and there’s nothing in my flat,” Sherlock said around a mouthful of tart, just to annoy his brother.

“So go to the shops.”

“The shops?” Sherlock said in the way some people might say, “Saturn?”

“A shop? You can buy fruit, meat, veg. They’re quite popular these days,” Mycroft said witheringly.

“Yes, I’ve heard of them, dear brother,” Sherlock said in that smooth toned that warned everyone he was going in for the kill. “This is merely an area where you are clearly the expert.” Raising his teacup for a sip, he made sure Mycroft knew he was glancing at the buttons on his suit jacket, which were definitely straining a bit.

“Not difficult to be considered an expert when most of what your little brother puts in his body is purchased behind Boots at 3 in the morning,” Mycroft replied, his voice dripping with disdain.

Sherlock took a breath, ready to fire his own retort, when Mrs. Hudson interjected, “Surely your mother took you shopping when you were boys?” No need to spoil tea time with a row.  
Sherlock quirked an eyebrow at Mycroft and looked at him questioningly. Mycroft returned only a baffled look as he shrugged one of his shoulders.

Sherlock slowly shook his head, pressing his lips in a fine line. “No,” he eventually said. “No, I don’t think Mummy ever went to the shop. There were always…people.”  
This was another one of Mrs. Hudson’s favorite things (#27 for Sherlock and #16 for Mycroft) – they were all grown up, but she was still “Mummy.”

Mrs. Hudson walked over to the coffee table and began to sweep the tart crumbs into her open hand.

“Well, then,” she said to Sherlock. “What are you going to do now that you don’t have ‘people’?”

Sherlock gave her a pointed look. “What do you mean?”

Mycroft pursed his lips and went back to his own tea, turning slightly away from the impending explosion. He unsuccessfully tried to keep his eyes from dancing; he was indeed glad he dropped by today.

***********************************************************************************************************************

“Are you quite through with your sulk?” Mrs. Hudson asked Sherlock as they both entered the brightly lit store.

Sherlock touched his fingertips to his right ear, which Mrs. Hudson had grabbed as she’d hauled him from 221 Baker Street into a cab.

“I think the bleeding’s stopped,” he said with a sniff.

“Oh, stop being silly,” Mrs. Hudson replied, refusing to indulge him.

“I don’t know what you and Mycroft think you’ll prove. I have a growing list of emails to review for cases, and St. Bart’s morgue is getting two new bodies today. This is a complete waste of my time and skills.”

Mrs. Hudson looked at him with her eyes twinkling a bit. “Well, if you don’t think you can handle this….”

Sherlock narrowed his eyes into what he hoped was one of his meaner looks. He hated that she was attempting to use reverse psychology on him; he hated himself more because it was working.

“I didn’t say that,” he practically snarled as he took the shopping list from her and wrenched it in half, keeping a portion for himself and returning the other to her.  
Mrs. Hudson smiled at him. “Meet you here at half past.”

************************************************************************************************************************  
Sherlock wasn’t really one for religion or spirituality or contemplating the afterlife. However, if he had to imagine hell, he thought it wouldn’t be terribly different from the meat counter at a grocery store.  
In addition to clutching a numbered ticket like an imbecile and having no escape from the bland music droning away over the sound system, he couldn’t even take refuge in some interesting deductions.  
People weren’t nearly as difficult to figure out as many would believe. Hair, weight, clothing, jewelry, posture, scars, wrinkles, eyes and ears – each detail revealed stories the individual thought were secreted away. With everyone pushing around baskets full of food and drinks, the so-imagined carefully concealed truths were embarrassingly easy to uncover. A review of the surrounding items told him if the shopper was married, single, in a relationship, having an affair, pets (what kind and how many), no children, children (how many and what ages), on a diet, having a party, allergies, organizational habits, income level, and so forth. If people realized how intimate shopping was, they would throw blankets over their trolleys.

“Number 17!” a 20-something girl behind the counter called out.

Sherlock glanced at his ticket, felt a ridiculous surge of joy that he could soon leave this place and stepped forward to order.  
“I want ham,” Sherlock said. He glanced back at the list. “A quarter pound of it.”

The girl gave him a blank look.

Oh. “Please,” Sherlock added, trying to keep the corners of his mouth from quirking upward. Shopping wasn’t so hard; dreadfully dull, but nothing that was beyond his skill.

“What kind?” the girl asked.

“What?”

“What kind? Salted, unsalted, boiled, baked, tavern—”

“It doesn’t matter!” Sherlock said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Just give me ham!”

For some reason that Sherlock couldn’t fathom, the girl decided to point out and describe each of the displayed hams. “All right, look, this one is really popular. This one has a glaze. This one comes from one of those ‘free-range’ places, and this one has low –"

“I don’t care!” Sherlock spat out in frustration. “Just give me something that, not long ago, was rolling around in mud before it had a bolt driven through its skull, bled out, had its hair scalded off and internal organs removed before being chopped, packaged and shipped here!”

Behind Sherlock, several shoppers let their tickets flutter to the floor as they walked away from the meat counter.

The girl’s eyes were becoming watery as her cheeks flushed with pink splotches. “How do you want it sliced?” she meekly asked.

“With that spinning blade behind you! Are you sure you’re properly qualified to be here?”

The girl dropped her head as she moved toward the display case. On the way, she let out a sniffle and a few pitiful whimpers.

“Ohhh, he’s making her cry! Well done there, mate!” a woman sounded quite pissed off at Sherlock.

Sherlock couldn’t believe she thought he was responsible for this. The detective whirled around to face the other customers. “It’s not my fault her boyfriend finished with her last night!”

A louder wail came from behind the counter, as the girl took off her apron and ran into the back room.

“You had better not be getting more ham!” Sherlock yelled after her.

**************************************************************************************************************************  
“But, Mummy, whyyyyyy can’t I have the apple juice?”

A 5-year-old brat had been whinging about juice for the past half-minute as Sherlock stood in the cereals aisle. Damn the cameras that seemed to be everywhere, because Sherlock was quite sure he could rip off the boy’s head and stage the scene to look like an accident.

“Because, sweetie, apple juice isn’t good for us! We want to eat things that will make our bodies healthy, with no nasty chemicals or sugars that will make us fat and tired and ruin our teeth, don’t we?”

The towheaded boy was quiet, as he appeared to be digesting this information. Sherlock felt a bit of tension leave his shoulders.

“But, Mummy, whyyyyyyyy?”

A shudder ran through Sherlock’s body as he slammed down the box of Wheatabix he’d been studying and turned toward the brat.  
“Because your mother’s an idiot whose nutritional knowledge is limited to whatever is being spouted on the latest chat show. If she had even the slightest bit of brain activity to lead her to, I don’t know, pick up a carton and read the label, she’d notice that all of the beverages in her trolley have chemical additives, her gluten-free cakes have more fat than they would with gluten, and oh! This bag of veg crisps expired. Two! Months ago!”

Mother and son stared at Sherlock, with their mouths slightly agape. The mother was red-faced with fury; the son was gazing at Sherlock with a look that could only be called “worshipful.”

With nothing to add, Sherlock did what he always did in this type of situation – give them one more imperious look before turning away in a wide half-circle, allowing his billowing coat to have the last word.

******************************************************************************************************************************************  
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Trevor McManus yelled at the man in the dark coat.  
As store manager, Trevor wasn’t one for shouting and swearing at customers – or any employee-customer relations that weren’t endorsed by the training manuals and videos. However, no one in the manuals or videos had to deal with a sobbing counter girl who’d locked herself in the ladies’ toilets as well as a string of angry, embarrassed and – oddly enough – newly vegan customers who all wanted a tall, dark-haired man in a long coat tossed out of the shop. Despite having a series of matching descriptions and a few glimpses of the man on the CCTV, Trevor had had an incredibly difficult time finding him. He was starting to believe the store was haunted by a malevolent spirit.

The man didn’t even jump. He merely stopped moving jars of jam from the shelves to a nearby basket and slid a cool gaze over Trevor. “Really? Isn’t it obvious? You’ll need to do some work before the interview for the regional manager position Friday.”

“Next Tuesday!” Trevor blurted, wondering how the man even knew that.

The man gave a slight nod. “Ah, of course.”

Maybe this man was some kind of pre-interview test from corporate? Trevor doubted that, but – just to be safe – he calmed down and put on his most professional tone.  
“I’m sorry, sir, but you must answer my question.”

“Oh, must I?” the man asked, not even bothering to keep the mockery out of his voice. “I’m moving the brown sauce closer to the sausages.” The man jerked his chin toward a second basket that was indeed heaped with bottles of brown sauce.

Trevor was dumbfounded. “Why?”

“The current layout is completely illogical. Most of the shoppers here are moving about the store in a clockwise pattern. Not only are the sausages and brown sauce unreasonably far apart, the customer will pass the brown sauce before seeing the sausages at the meat counter. A person could be tempted into buying sausages without first buying brown sauce, but not in the other order, which leads the shopper to retrace his or her steps and waste even more time in this godforsaken store.”

Trevor wasn’t sure what shocked him more – this man’s audacity or the fact that he was still standing after delivering that diatribe without taking a single breath.

“Oooh, you know, I’d like the brown sauce closer to the meat counter,” a woman’s voice piped up.

Trevor turned to his right to see a small crowd of shoppers had gathered and were intently watching this incident unfold.

“Dead handy when I’m here on a Sunday,” another woman said. There was a chorus of agreement and nodding heads.

The man smiled at him in triumph. “See?” He pointed at each woman in turn. “No A-levels! Locked her keys in her car, with the engine still running, this morning! Visits psychics! Yet even they understand it’s a better idea!”

And that was how Sherlock Holmes gained and lost a fan club in less than 10 minutes.

“She never!” Mrs. Hudson said with a gasp as she and Delia Parkinson chatted in as they picked out their greens.  
“She did!” Delia confirmed. “Right on the dining room table!”

After that nasty business with her husband those years ago, Mrs. Hudson had become quite averse to engaging in idle gossip. However, if Polly Mitchell was going to bring the postman and her gardener into … things, she’d have to expect a few chins to wag, Mrs. Hudson reasoned.

“Does her husband suspect anything?”

“Oh, no, but if I were her, I’d worry about the milkman finding out,” Delia said with a glint in her eyes.

Mrs. Hudson was about to let out another scandalized squeal when the store’s PA system “bonged” to life.

“Will a Mrs. … Hudson?” a man said. Then there was some murmured conversation that she couldn’t quite hear, although one of the murmurs sounded awfully familiar. “What do you mean, ‘That is her full name’? It can’t be!” she heard the man hiss; huffing, he continued, “Mrs. Hudson, please come to the front desk? Now.”

Delia gave Mrs. Hudson a curious look.

“Sherlock’s helping me with the shopping today,” Mrs. Hudson said, sounding (and feeling) quite defeated.

Delia’s eyebrows threatened to disappear into her scalp. Collecting herself, she gave her friend a sympathetic smile. “Off you go, then.”

Feeling Delia pat her back supportively, Mrs. Hudson squared her shoulders and took a deep breath before heading to the front of the store.

*******************************************************************************************************************************************  
“A lifetime ban?!” John asked incredulously.

“A list?!” Sherlock asked indignantly.

“Sherlock, don’t change the subject! You’re not allowed to enter a supermarket in the whole of London!” John exclaimed to his flatmate.

“At least I was able to talk them out of a countrywide ban,” Mrs. Hudson said. “How would that have worked?”

“Don’t you change the subject! You – “ Sherlock pointed an accusing finger at Mrs. Hudson, “made a list so you could remember why you liked me?!”

Feigning innocence, Mrs. Hudson looked at Sherlock, her eyes wide and tone placid. “Why, yes, I did, dear. Weren’t you listening?”

“How long is John’s list?” Sherlock demanded.

“John doesn’t need a list, love,” she replied sweetly, gently touching the doctor’s shoulder. He turned toward her and smiled.

“Haven’t you noticed how boring he can be?!” Sherlock exclaimed. “And he wears jumpers!” He found it quite outrageous that John was going unpunished for his crimes against humanity.

John had barely gotten out his protesting, “Oi!” before Sherlock announced. “He needs a list, and I’ll write down all of the reasons why.”

“Don’t you bloody dare!” John tried to snatch a pad of paper from the nearby desk before Sherlock could reach it.

“John, this is for the common good!”

“You write one word and I’m moving out!”

Mrs. Hudson took this as her cue to discreetly slip out the door and make a dash for the Hoover on the landing. The row wouldn’t likely last more than 20 minutes, and both of their bedrooms needed doing.


End file.
